International Truck Update 19

Welcome everybody to service Drive Revolution International Truck edition. We have an exciting show today. We are going to talk about what we're reading and learning and also about the future of EVs and what our thoughts are and insights. How's it going, Jeremy and Adam? How are you guys today?

Doing well, Chris. Doing well.

How about you?

Super excited.

Fantastic. Glad to be here.

That was very believable, by the way.

Fantastic.

Yeah, I say that when I really don't mean it's fantastic myself.

Yeah. What's going on, buddy? Are you okay? Do you need. Do we need to talk about anything?

Just a little tired. Kid's starting to go through a little sleep regression, so. Yeah, see, so Jeremy knows what I'm talking about. Yeah. Besides that, it's been pretty good.

So what are you reading right now? What's inspiring you?

So for I thought it was, you know, I'd say month of March is typically kind of an exciting month for me especially, you know, you got St. Patrick's Day.

I'm a March baby. Most of my friends are actually have March birthdays as well. So it's kind of a party type of month. But not only that, it's National Women's Month as well. I don't know if you guys know that at all, but I'd say for this I picked a very festive and kind of book, but also enlightening. It's called Whiskey Women. It's the untold story of how women Save Bourbon, Scotch and Irish Whiskey by Fred Minick. Have you guys ever heard of it?

No, but this may be the best book that anybody's ever brought up on the show.

Well, I'll be. I'll be totally honest. I haven't finished it all. I feel like I kind of start like four or five books. Right. I'm just kind of like Colleen and the books stage. But I thought this was kind of interesting because I was trying to find some books outside of the hole leadership business kind of realm kind of changed things up. So I. I was curious about Just Bourbon. I think we were talking a little bit, a little bit ago. I'm planning a bachelor party for one of my best friends. He's getting married here soon, down in, you know, Louisville, Kentucky. And I'm. I know I pronounced that wrong. So all of my friends out there. Louisville, correct me. Yes. And we're going to try to hit the bourbon trail a little bit. So I was just kind of curious on some other ones that are out there. But anyways.

They kind of start the historical aspect of just Brewing beer. So in Mesopotamia, there are historical facts that women actually created the first kind of, you know, fermenting of berries into wine, actually creating a beer. Did you know that?

No.

So you.

That's great though.

Thank all the women out there that we have these fantastic beverages starting back in the olden times of ancient civilization leading up to now. So actually, you know, I think when we think about or we're told about with women in Prohibition, there were heavily infants that. But they also had a lot of different activities during bootlegging as well. So they played all sides of that. And then in times of, you know, war, they stepped up to the occasion, not only building and manufacturing, but also making sure that we had liquor distilling as well. But I'd say that probably one of the coolest facts that I think we've all heard of Maker's Mark. And if I just scroll down here, I want to make sure I don't butcher the name as I usually do, is Marge Samuels. So look her up. She really definitely was the force behind the creation of Maker's Mark. Talking about with her husband on opening a distillery back in the day. So really, it's quite interesting and I think that's great. That's great because I'm a bourbon guy, so, you know, I won't share with you guys my favorite, but I do have the glass and it is. I am pretty particular on my ice having the one. The one, you know, solid ice cube is crucial and. And I like to have around three, three finger lengths in there. Fourth, if it's been a rough week. So. So who knows with this sleep regression, I might have four, but, yeah, that's the book I'm reading.

So what is your favorite? I think I know your favorite because I've witnessed you order it before. But what is your favorite?

I'd say right now it's probably Buffalo Trace.

That's one of the tours, right, that you can go on?

Yes.

And it's funny that you. You're saying this because next month I'm going to Kentucky to do a leadership workshop. And I was thinking about staying a couple days because our clients there have always offered to take me on the bourbon trail. And I was thinking about hitting a couple. I don't think I need to hit them all, but hitting two or three of them might be really fun. Doing the tour. I'm not sure if they're open yet because of COVID but I'm a tequila guy. But I. I would love to be educated and learn more about it.

Well, so I'll say this from some of my fact finding, most of them are open in some sort of limited capacity. One of the misconceptions though, because of the bourbon trail, it's not like, like a whiskey row where all the bars are next to each other. So to hit a good majority of them, it's, you're going to be spending more time in the car hitting them up.

But I will say this whiskey in itself or bourbon has really grown to where it's there for sipping and testing and the smoothness. But it's all based on their barrels too and how they're aged. I don't know. I haven't gone through the tour so I'm pretty stoked about going there in summer and checking them out myself. But I've heard Woodford, Buffalo Trace is pretty good. But I'm sure there's a few other ones. I like the kind of like the hole in the wall type, distilleries type things because that's just, I like the rich history as you know.

Yeah. And the craftsmanship. Right. Like the love and the passion of small batch. So I was approached a little while ago about doing my own tequila.

And I've learned a lot about the process and a lot of these big companies, like say for example, Tito's Vodka or whatever.

Only a small percentage of it is handcrafted, it's mass produced. And so I agree with you is that small, intimate, you know, smaller batch stuff is really, you know, it's art and a way.

Right. There's a lot of about the process.

Yeah.

And we'll keep it for another segment. But that's how I feel about barbecue and the whole smoking process. I, I, I prefer the traditional Texas style smoker rather than these fakes that like to do the pellet grills. There's a process into it. Yeah, there's a process to it. Just like handcrafted, you know, alcohol is.

It is the, the pellet one called Traeger?

Well, there's, they're their brand that. Yeah.

And so you're saying that people with the Traeger are fake barbecue.

Yes.

So I should send my Traeger back.

Hey, it's all, it's all up to the perception interpretation. You're going to think I'm, you're going to think I'm crazy. That I prefer to spend the 12 to 18 hours with like two hours of sleep, you know, stoke in the fire and making sure that I've got a good perfect bark on either, you know, my pork butt or Even, you know, good smoke ring on the, on the, on the ribs, you know, and you go and spend all that time and effort for what? How fast does it take to eat it? 10, 15 minutes. But for me, I like that process.

Yeah, I think it's great, just great that Adam has read all these wonderful books. You know what I read? I read the world's worst thesaurus. Not only was it terrible, but it was terrible.

That was a Christian drive by.

Thanks for that, Christian. Okay, well, we need to thank all the, the ladies in the world for contributing whiskey to society, right? That's what we've learned.

Yes.

So any, any ladies that I walk by the rest of the day, I'm gonna thank them randomly.

Because of you, Adam. So the book, the book I'm reading is Jordan Peterson's new book, Beyond Order. I don't know if you guys can see this, but it's an autographed copy, also signed copy.

It even has a sticker that says sign copy.

So this is the Follow up to 12rules for life.

Which was incredible. Which was the follow up to his first book, Maps of Meaning. But.

It'S a great looking book too. He had a contest for the person to do the images in it, and he actually put up a podcast recently interviewing her, who won it, talking about the graphics and the design in it. But I like it better than the last one. It's great. There's great, great stuff in here.

So you want me to read you guys just the rules?

Yes.

More than anything.

Rule number one, do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement.

That's clearly for you, Jeremy. Number two, imagine who you could be and then aim single mindedly at it.

So, you know, shoot for full potential. Number three, do not hide unwanted things in the fog.

I like that one. That's good.

Or the elephant in the room, right?

Yeah.

Number four, notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.

That's definitely good for these times.

Number five, do not do what you hate.

Number six, abandon ideology.

Number seven, work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and, and see what happens.

Number eight, try to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible. Clearly, Jeremy's doing that, obviously here. Yeah, with the, with the cat thing.

Number nine, if old memories still upset you, write them down carefully and completely. Number 10, plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship.

Well, I already got that one.

I mean, it's like, really, what romantic things have you done today for your wife?

You know, I Mean, they don't come to mind, but I'm sure I've done several ones of those.

So you can't remember, but you're sure you did it.

Definitely. As a personality type, I can tell that I have.

If you're explaining, you're losing.

Did you get up this morning and make your wife like coffee and bring it to her in bed?

Definitely not, but I know that she likes to make her own coffee. So there you go, you know.

So you allowed her to make her own coffee, which in return is you.

Let's get it right, Chris. She was probably already up and he was already still sleeping.

Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship. What are you doing, Adam, to maintain the romance in your relationship?

I make coffee every morning. I get the kid up and ready and raring to go. It's a trade off.

So that's not romance, by the way.

So clearly I need to read you the definition of romance.

Okay, next one. 11. Do not allow yourself to become resentful and deceitful or arrogant.

Hold on a second. Chris, what are you doing?

What do you mean?

Go retract back. You got Jeremy, you got me. How are you doing for romance?

Oh, I'm doing great. But so my fiance just had a birthday so a couple days ago, so I'm good. I got her some cool stuff for her birthday. We had a little celebration for her.

So I mean I can probably ride that for another couple weeks.

There you go.

I'm guessing. Unless you've heard different. What did you hear? Number 12. Be grateful in spite of your suffering.

Grateful in spite of your suffering. I love Jordan. He's my favorite. Honestly.

I'm about to start his. His. The book previous to this one. But I have been watching a lot of videos on him in some of his interviews and what I appreciate about him as. As an author and I'm not one either, so I just thought this was very interesting. Did you know that he is so meticulous in his writings that he'll take sentences and he'll keep rewriting them and rewording them to be almost perfection. So like when he goes and writes and authors a book, it's basically perfection in his mind. I thought that was quite interesting as you know how an author really dissects their own work. And if you do check out on audio, he does audiobooks, he does read his own books. So I know that was one of our things too. So I thought that was another just added bonus.

Yeah, you see that book behind you, Millionaire Service. Advisor. Yeah, I obsessed about every sentence in that. Rewrote him over and over again.

See, that's. I think that's great.

I'm joking. No, that's. You know, that story comes from Maps of Meaning, his first book, which is really dense, but packed with a lot of. A lot of information. But he said when he wrote that, it took him a long time because he would obsess about the sentences like that while he. He wrote that book while he was at Harvard. While he was a professor at Harvard.

You should start with Maps of Meaning, maybe.

Should I? Okay, so I'll have both of them going at the same time, or is that a bad move?

My favorite chapter in 12 Rules for Life is the one about don't raise kids that you don't like.

And he makes the point in there that, like, there is a point where you're in charge of what they eat, where they go, what they watch, what they think, you know, you're programming them. And don't lose that opportunity.

I feel like that even right now. And she's only. She's going to be 10 months soon because I get the morning routine, and I like to watch the news in the morning and the whole bottle in the morning. She kind of just turns her head and she starts watching tv. And I'm like, I don't want her to start that just yet. Getting excited, so I gotta turn it off.

Oh, you don't want her excited about the tv?

I don't. Yeah, we don't want to introduce that just yet. She really likes books. Unlike her dad previously to all this. She loves books. Pout Pout Fish is probably her favorite.

What one's her favorite?

Pout Pout Fish.

Cool.

I like that one, too. Classic.

Never heard of it. What's inspiring you, Jeremy?

Well, I just want to launch on a very quick statement about bachelor parties and how I resent that the recent trend has been to take someone to a place they like and do something they like during a bachelor party. That was not my experience. I feel like I was the last person to. To get abused in a place I did not like for my bachelor party. I think that should be the tradition. But, you know, everyone's, like, doing, like, nice things for their best man's, doing nice things for the groom, and that's nice. That was not my experience. I think that I feel like Cobra Commander planned my bachelor party because it's just the worst minds of all my friends came together and produced this truly awful experience for me. So I'm resentful. But, you know, I hope you enjoy, enjoy your event down in Bourbon country.

Well, maybe after years of therapy, you can get through that.

And maybe the lesson in that, Jeremy, is you need new friends.

Yeah, I didn't mean it. I did meet new friends. But we'll talk. That's for another. That's for another edition. Jeremy's. Jeremy's foray into the seedy parts of Chicago unwilling.

I would love to go with Adam on that bachelor party, though, and just videotape whatever's going on.

Just for blackmail later.

As far as what I'm reading, honestly, I'm deep into the boring government studies and plans and stuff like that, being that as it is for me. But what I've been really delving into lately is freight capacity and intermodal freight capacity. As boring as it sounds, it really affects a lot of my area. And what I have learned is, first of all, it's all Los Angeles's fault.

Because of all the imports that are coming in that happened from the pandemic. Like it caused huge backlogs across the country, starting at the Port of Los Angeles and going all the way over to, to Illinois. So our, our intermodal freight capacity is 100% all the way up and down the state. And that's. I thought that was really interesting because it's affecting everything else, because as we all know about processes, when you have a bottleneck, it slows down production for the rest of it. And we're, we're experiencing that pretty much across the board. And I've, I've been doing a lot of reading on that because shipping really affects my area because we are, we're the crossroads of America. 80% of freight volume through Illinois and then gets taxed on it. So.

It'S an interesting thing I've been reading about. And another thing I've been reading a lot about is how to increase the efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of shipping. And one of the cool things I've been looking at is the Port of Los Angeles is looking into.

Electric drayage vehicles. So basically, the vehicles that move the containers around, short point to point.

Those are huge pollution drivers. And they're also very inefficient. So what they're trying to do is they're running a pilot in California for using these electric vehicles to move containers around. And I think that's really interesting. They've had a lot of struggles with. It's less about the vehicle and more about the charging infrastructure. They can't figure out how to charge these vehicles fast Enough at the same time produce a charger that a vehicle can just park on and use. And it's been, it's been an interesting, interesting development, but it's something that I've been researching a lot lately. And yeah, that's what I've been looking into besides, you know, reading for fun.

So, and, so what's your conclusion? What do you think will, will happen with, with that in the. Well, what do you think will happen with the infrastructure of charging.

Trucks when they, when they start coming out?

Well, I think we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to plan around the demands of the industry. So we're gonna have to develop inductive chargers, like kind of how when you set your phone on, on one of those plates, it'll charge itself. That's what we need to do for electric vehicles. And that's, that's kind of where the direction they're going in. But as in the industry, we're gonna have to plan around that as well because that is the, the ultimate definition of quality is what are the customers requirements? That's going to be the requirement. Charging a vehicle in 15 minutes, just parking over a plate. So we're going to have to change a lot in how we manufacture vehicles, how we service vehicles, just around those requirements of having electric vehicles that are built to charge super fast and need to be serviced super fast.

So the thing with that though, is that the technology isn't there for batteries to charge super fast, right?

No, that's been one of the other challenges. It's not the capacity. It's charging them fast enough that they're still safe and charging them in a way that you don't require this really heavy, hard to use charging wire or charging cord or.

That also doesn't diminish the longevity or the life of the battery.

Because what's hard on it is charging, right?

Yeah, it's charging as much as it'll need within the smallest amount of time period. Because I mean, the fueling, it takes about 20 minutes to fuel a standard diesel truck. That's the standard. How can we get fueling down to 15 or 20 minutes? So it matches a diesel truck. And that's where honestly the biggest amount of developments being put into is charging quickly and without, you know, ruining the vehicle.

How many years do you think we're away from, from having that technology?

I would hope less than five. Honestly, that's, that's the amount of development they're putting into it. I'd like to see as soon as possible, but I think less than 5. We can have these operating at ports.

What do you think is more, more important, the charging time or the range?

I think the charging time, if you charge really fast, you don't have to have a lot of range as long as you have the. In the capacity I'm talking about. So, like, with drainage vehicles, they can just. They can run their containers, do their work, and then if they're idle for a minute, they can charge. But, like, for long haul, it's going to be range all day because you're not. You're going to have a lot of challenges with infrastructure, having those charging ports in enough places that electric trucks will work. So I think honestly, for short hauls, it's going to be.

Charging time. For long hauls, it's going to be battery range.

Hmm, that's interesting. Well, it's interesting that California is the hub of all that, huh?

Yeah, it's. It's again, like, you are the source of the problem for a lot of shipping across the country because of all the imports coming in. So it would be. It does make sense to start using. To start using efficient technologies there while at the same time making sure the people that live around the port don't have to deal with too many. Too much particulate matter pollution.

You know, all this talk about electric vehicles has really made me wonder something. What do you call.

Someone who performs a symphony on top of a Tesla truck?

What do you call someone who performs a symphony on top of a Tesla truck?

Electric light orchestra.

Did he get it?

No, but that was dark. That might be better than the real answer. The answer is a semiconductor.

So, you know. You guys know Christian has a Tesla, right?

I did not know that.

Yeah, he loves it, right, Christian?

I would say it's probably the easiest car that I've ever owned.

But it's a lot of fun. It's quick, for sure.

What's interesting, Jeremy, is he doesn't charge it that often. Really.

I don't put a ton of miles on it either, so I'm probably in the minority. Like, the thing is 14 months old, and I think I've got 6,000 miles on it.

Have you ever, like, ran it to where it's almost like, dead just to see what the capacity is on it?

You know, it's surprisingly not that much. I think I've gotten to within 20 miles of where it said it was empty. And then I started to, like, I'm. I'm nervous at 50 miles left because sometimes, you know, the mileage indicator is not super accurate too it's like. Which is like a gas gauge, right? Like, one second you'll be at a quarter tank, and then all of a sudden the lights on. So I don't try to push it, personally, because I don't like breaking down in the middle of nowhere. I don't know about you guys, but in the greater Los Angeles area, there are places that would be fun to break down and places would not be so fun to break down, but. But I haven't pushed it yet.

I just remember, see, I was one of those kind of kids, a broke college kid. I. I didn't really always fill up the gas even to. Or the vehicle to even a quarter. So I'd always be riding on E. And my friends got stories on that, you know, oh, a crazed car over here, it's still on E, you know, just waiting to see on fumes. And I hate to admit, but I'll say it, we were at a stoplight and in the turning lane, and it just died. And the gas station, thank God, was on the corner, but I always rode it on E. And I was like, oh, probably won't do that anymore.

Well, I mean, I think we all did that, right? When you didn't have money, you just put in the money you had.

Yep, I've had a gas can.

There you go.

So one. One thing we're. We're kind of noticing in automotive with electric is there's this kind of overall panic about it. Like that it's. That it's a huge change coming, you know, and that there isn't the same sort of maintenance on them. And I was on this panel and they were calling me a futurist because, you know, I kind of have a different take on. On all that. But I find that, like, even, like with COVID right, is there's going to be a group that panics and gets out or what. You know, they, the survivalists that run up in the hills and, you know, have £200 of beans and rice and water and that sort of thing. Like, they panic. But whenever there's a shift in an industry, there's huge opportunity. And so just looking at what's happened so far with electric is they break.

They break. And when they break, they're really expensive to fix. So you're seeing warranty tickets that are, you know, 15, $20,000 very commonplace in automotive.

You know, because it's new technology.

Right.

So the, the idea that, that we're not going to have work or, you know, they have less moving parts does not mean that they're easier to fix. They, they still are complicated to fix. The batteries are, are complicated. The, the other thing that you see is because they're heavier, they go through tires quicker. So I know I've had, I've had an experience with you guys where we don't sell tires. Like, we're not selling tires. I'm not sure what that means. When somebody says, I'm not selling tires and they hit the table, you guys read body language, what does that mean?

They're not selling tires.

Yeah, well, we might want to consider at some point getting in the tire business because they, I know tire manufacturers are trying to figure it out, but they, because they're heavier, they go through, you know, they go through tires quicker. They do catch on fire. Right. Tesla's. I mean, because of the batteries.

There are more catching on fire. I guess. I don't know the stats to that, but I've, you know, I've read about it and I've had friends that have experienced it. Right.

So the, the safety and the fire part, and then.

There'S, you know, I think as we transition to driverless, there's going to be a lot of retrofitting going on. That's going to be a lot of work for us as an industry, especially in service and parts departments because, you know, like, let's say International comes out with driverless truck, eventually they're probably. You are also going to package that in something that the parts department can sell and the service department can retrofit, right?

Yeah, that would be an opportunity. Right?

Yeah. And also, like, there's going to be cities like Los Angeles or New York that they're going to dictate that if you want to come in with within the city limits, you're going to have to be on the grid and you're going to have to have the driverless technology because it's safer and more efficient and it's going to help reduce traffic because you don't need stoplights. It's kind of like, you know, air traffic control for airports.

Right.

You don't need stop lights and all that because they, if you're on the grid, the, the vehicles and trucks can talk to each other and just time. So you'll just have vehicles going through intersections, like missing each other by two seconds, but it'll be more efficient.

Now, Chris, in your experience in the automotive side, looking at this from a dealer's kind of perspective, you said some of the repairs are, the warranty tickets are pretty high. Are you seeing a big differentiation that contributes to that higher warranty claim, is it just parts or is there a lot of labor involved that also goes into it or is it kind of a even split?

Well, it definitely depends on the brand. But the one thing you kind of see with the batteries is that because everybody's trying to push the envelope on range, that these batteries are a little unstable. And so, you know, some of them, they, they attempt to repair, some of them, it's replace, you know. And so it just depends on the, the brand in which technology, because they're not all using the same technology, believe it or not, which also feeds to the infrastructure, like Jeremy was saying of charging, where Tesla has a huge advantage on everybody else because I have friends that have bought other brands that are electric cars and their frustration is they can't, you know, they can't really leave their area. You can't drive to Vegas. And a lot of the infrastructure that is out there, the charging stations aren't maintained. They're private companies and they're inconsistent or there's a line and Tesla kind of has, has it.

You know, they're just, they're, they're ahead of the curve with that. And it's interesting too because a lot of these companies aren't, they're not, it's not like in a gas or diesel where you can go to any gas station. Right. Like you would think they would share the technology or all be on the same sort sort of plug and charging and they're not. And so that creates some inconsistencies and spots throughout areas that you know you're in trouble if you run out of juice.

Well, I didn't really think about this until you brought that up, but I think some facilities might just be trying to have a charging station so that they can go out and market and say that, hey, check the box, we have a charging station. But you do bring up a good point. You know, I've seen out there, depending where you're at, there's been like Tesla sponsored. So you'd assume that, you know, those charging stations are, are pretty solid, but there's some other ones that, I mean, I don't have an electric vehicle, so I wouldn't really know. But maybe those are some kind of the minimum requirements to that. And, and maybe, yeah, like you said, there's going to be some sort of upkeeper maintenance on those as well that I, I would be curious to see if people in the industry are keeping tabs on.

Yeah, because they're out. They're usually outside companies not owned by Ford or You know, Porsche or Volkswagen or whatever, but they're like vending machine companies. And so they're really inconsistent in the, in the quality and how they charge. And a lot of times they'll be broken and that's it. Like, if they're not functioning, nobody's coming that day to fix them.

Because the infrastructure just isn't there. Right. They're, they're not, those companies are startups and they're not really profitable. They're, they're investing in the infrastructure, but they don't have the support in the text to fix things as quick as the technology is developing. Where Tesla has the infrastructure and they're maintaining it, so they're, they're way ahead of the curve with that. And I know people that have bought other brands that regret it because they can't drive to, you know, they can't drive north or they can't go east on a road trip. They just wouldn't. They need a gas car to do that.

Interesting.

I mean, there's, I would imagine in Illinois too, it's the same thing. Like, you're just not going to go south in Illinois.

Once you're outside of Chicago. Yeah. With, with, you know, or you're not gonna go to Indiana.

I mean, you just wouldn't go there anyway.

So you kind of need somebody to step in and create an infrastructure that is consistent and, and well planned out.

In order for it to really work, you know, which will, which will eventually happen. But it seems like.

You know, Tesla has that advantage now. I know Volkswagen plans on putting, I think, something like 5,000 charging stations in the US and Canada. And so that would serve Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, but they understand that they have to invest in that and other brands are kind of thinking the same, but it takes a while and it's very expensive.

Well, that's one of the interesting things about Tesla is people rip on Tesla a lot because they make money or they haven't made a whole, they haven't made a lot of revenue, but they're setting something up. It's, it's kind of like similar to the air, to the air industry back in the early 1920s. You know, there wasn't a lot of airports. There wasn't, there wasn't a lot of planes, but there was a lot of investment at the time to build airports and to build, to put out new planes. It's, it's similar because there's, there's nothing, there's nothing to compare this to as far as setting up an infrastructure. It's just, we have our existing diesel and gas infrastructure, but that took 100 years to build. So we're trying to build the same thing with electric in a smaller amount of time. So it's going to be interesting to see when the infrastructure capacity.

Matches up with the amount of demand for electric vehicles.

And if.